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Israel blamed for Hariri assassination

BEIRUT: Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, will present evidence on Monday purporting to implicate Israel in the car bomb assassination in 2005 of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri.

With a United Nations special tribunal expected to present findings next month implicating Hezbollah in Mr Hariri's murder, political observers fear the weight of the allegations could shatter Lebanon's fragile government of national unity.

Sheikh Nasrallah has consistently denied any link between his radical Shiite movement and Hariri's murder. Over the past 12 months 70 Lebanese have been arrested for spying for Israel. Three were sentenced to death.

On Thursday Lebanese security forces arrested Fares Karam, a former general in the Lebanese army and a member of the Hezbollah-allied Christian party, the Free Patriotic Movement, on suspicion of spying for Israel.

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Adding to the instability in Lebanon this week was a cross-border attack by the Lebanese Army on an Israeli army unit trying to remove a tree on the Israeli side of the border with Lebanon.